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SAM Deep Dives with The University of Melbourne
21 October 2023
FreeSAM Deep Dives with The University of Melbourne
Join Shepparton Art Museum for a new monthly series of talks and conversation, SAM Deep Dives with the University of Melbourne from September to November 2023.
Delving into the themes and ideas of current collection exhibition Dance Me to the End of Love, this series of lectures led by academics and researchers from the University of Melbourne investigates death, technology, poetry and society in three unique conversations prompted by works in the SAM Collection.
This is a dual delivery event. You are welcome to join us either in person at Shepparton Art Museum or online via Zoom.
This event will be recorded.
I am, I am, I am: Artist, Poet, Spy
Speaker: Dr Tyne Sumner
‘Poetry is just the evidence of life,’ Leonard Cohen once said. ‘If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.’ Representing life, in all its permutations, is the trade of the poet, artist and singer-songwriter alike. But what happens when the life of the artist themselves comes under the spotlight? When biography takes centre stage, what becomes of the representational function of art?
Examining the SAM collection alongside the lyrics of Cohen and his contemporaries, Dr Sumner considers the often fraught but also tender, fascinating and ultimately irresolvable tension between an artist’s life, work and the spectacle that is our dance from birth to death.
Date: 21 October Saturday
Time: 2:00pm - 3:00pm
Where: SAM Lin Onus Gallery, Level 1, 530 Wyndham Street, Shepparton or online via Zoom (Zoom details provided following booking)
Price: Free
Dr Tyne Sumner is a researcher in the Department of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Melbourne. Her work explores the relationship between literature and surveillance, with a focus on twentieth-century American poetry, confession and the FBI. Her first book is titled 'Lyric Eye: The Poetics of Twentieth-Century Surveillance' and her next project, titled 'Beyond Big Brother' will examine the representation of surveillance in a range of global contemporary novels. She also writes on digital culture, facial recognition technology and her favourite musician, David Bowie.
Image courtesy of Dr Tyne Sumner.
Woman and Child
Speaker: Dr Danny Butt
University of Melbourne senior lecturer Dr Danny Butt focuses on Sam Jinks’ much-loved Woman and Child to prompt a discussion on life, death and gender politics.
How do women bear responsibility for cultural meaning? In a world where “lived experience” is increasingly understood to underpin authentic representation, what can we learn from how Jinks as a male artist stages both woman and child? What does the work’s detailed focus on individual bodies illuminate about Western culture’s philosophy of life and death? Such questions help unfold the complex dynamics animating the sculpture and its continuing power to move audiences.
Date: Thursday 9 November
Time: 6:00pm - 7:00pm
Where: SAM Lin Onus Gallery, Level 1, 530 Wyndham Street, Shepparton or online via Zoom (Zoom details provided following booking)
Price: Free
Dr Danny Butt is Senior Lecturer in Interdisciplinary Practice and Co-ordinator of Research in Design and Production at Victorian College of the Arts, Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, University of Melbourne.
Penny Byrne, The Four Horsemen of the 21st Century Apocalypse, 2009. Shepparton Art Museum. Photo: Leon Schoots.